
FLM 

2015 

036837 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 














































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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TO THE 


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27th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 


joJ 




0 


OF THE 


STATE OF NEW YORK. 

A./ ;v , 7? c r ■ // • ■ 

Fellow Citizens :—-As your Representative, I feel ^at I ought now to make to 
you a brief statement of the existing condition of the affairs of the nation, accom¬ 
panied by an historical review of the successive steps which have led the country to 
the verge of disunion. I believe such a statement and review will establish, by the 
most indubitable evidence, that the North is not responsible for the existing state of 
public affairs, and will also enable each citizen to determine what his duty is in the 
present emergency. 

Two causes render the happening of the present crisis inevitable. One is the slow 
but certain exhaustion of the capacity of the soil to produce when it is cultivated by 
the stupid and coerced labor of the slave. The other is the fact that the slave pop¬ 
ulation increases in number with much greater rapidity than the free. The exhaus¬ 
tion of the soil by slave labor requires constant accessions of territory, and makes its 
j 1 possession a necessity in the eyes of those who believe slavery the normal condition 
of the negro and a blessing to both the black and white race. With the increase 
in the proportion of the servile population, and with their gradual advancement in civ¬ 
ilization, and those consequent aspirations which result, necessarily, from their contact 
with the superior race increases also the desire and the chance of a successful ser¬ 
vile insurrection. The consequences of this increasing disproportion between mas¬ 
ters and their slaves can only be obviated for the time by sending their surplus la¬ 
borers into virgin territories. Thus, for the time, postponing the catastrophe by 
distributing the evil, but still leaving its inherent tendencies undisturbed. 

The original slave territory has been more than trebled, and the slave population 
increased six-fold, since the Revolution; yet the ostensible reason for withdrawing 
from the Union now is, that the Slave States are deprived of their just proportion of 
the common territories. In reference to this demand for more territory, Mr. Curry, 
j of Alabama, whose speech was considered the Southern speech of the session, said of 
I slavery : ‘‘Contributing so abundantly to civilization and humanity, is it unreasonable 
| that the South should demand its extension and protection, and exhibit sensitiveness at 
j the threat to surround her with a ‘cordon of free territory and to compel slavery, like 
j a serpent in a ring of fire, to sting itself to death . 5 55 

This demand for “protection” to their slave property is now their ultimatum, even 
in the Border States. You can judge for yourselves, when such is the ultimatum 
of the moderate men of the South, whether there is any, the remotest, hope of a 
compromise. The simple question for you to determine is, whether you will give 
a new constitutional guaranty to slavery in the Territories. If you will not, then 
the Border States will secede as well as the Cotton Slates. That is, they will se¬ 
cede if those who at present give direction to the sentiment of the South can have 
their way. It may be safely said, that there is not a single member from the Slave 
States, except Henry Winter Davis, of Md., and Mr. Etheridge, of Ten a., who 
dares openly say that he is in favor of staying in the Union without some constitu¬ 
tional guaranty, recognizing the right of the slaveholder to hold his slaves as prop¬ 
erty in the Territories. There are some who would be willing to restore the line of 





2 


.#A? 

3G°30', but they all demand protection south of that line. The Republican party 
conies into power upon the distinct principle, that the normal condition of the Ter¬ 
ritories is one of freedom, and that when it is necessary, the duty of Congress is to 
preserve them free, ; I aph (irmly convinced that no concession short of consenting 
that Mr. Lincoln should resign, and Mr. Breckenridge be inaugurated in his place, 
would keep the Cotton States from seceding. 

This crisis, which some time must be met, comes at a time when the country in 
all the elements of material wealth is unprecedentedly prosperous. The almost unin¬ 
terrupted peace which we have enjoyed since the Revolution has developed the 
resources of the country, both mental and material, as never before in the world’s 
history. We possess every substantial blessing which a people could ask—we sup¬ 
port only an insignificant standing Army and Navy. A general diffusion of intelli¬ 
gence and wealth, making the results of enterprise and labor sure and satisfactory, 
has made these United States second to none in the extent and diffusion of those 
blessings of peace which constitute the glory and happiness of a people. We have 
just elected, in a peaceful and constitutional manner, a chief magistrate of the Nation, 
and we are told that the platform on which he stands, the views which he entertains, 
are sufficient reasons for the breaking up of this Union and the prevention of his 
inauguration. 

One of the sovereign States has formally withdrawn from the Union and set the 
Government of the people at defiance, public forts and munitions of war in that State? 
and also, in Georgia and Alabama, have been forcibly seized. A revenue cutter and 
also, the Custom House and Arsenal, in the city of Charleston, have been seized, and 
over them now floats the Palmetto Flag instead of the Star Spangled Banner. The 
Cotton States, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, will cer¬ 
tainly, and almost as certainly, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina will join 
South Carolina. 

There can be little doubt that the most strenuous and systematic efforts are being 
made to drag into the new Slave Confederacy the border States of Delaware, Mary¬ 
land, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. The sympathies of these States are with 
the Cotton States, and nothing but their interest will keep them in the Union. 
Although their interest most palpably allies them with the North, and such is the 
view of their considerate men, the chances are, that they will be forced into the 
Southern Slave Confederacy by the fiery and reckless spirits who at present control 
them. Without the guarantees of the Constitution, even a peaceful separation will 
leave these Border States subject to the easy escape of their slaves, which would at 
once depopulate their border counties, fill them with free laborers, and the States 
themselves, would probably pass through the same emancipatory steps that the old 
Border States went through. Out of the Union, the Border States would be unable 
to prevent the reopening of the slave trade, either openly or covertly, which would 
at once beggar the slave producing’States. Negroes now worth $1500 to $2000 a 
piece, can be brought from Africa and sold in the Cotton States at an enormous 
profit for $100 a piece. In the Upion, sustained by the sentiment of the civilized 
world, the slave traffic would be suppressed as piratical, and the interest of the Border 
States would compel the Union to put it down with efficiency. But should a sepa¬ 
ration be attended with a civil war, these Border States would, in addition to these 
evils, become the battle fields of the contending parties, and would be likely to be 
depopulated by servile insurrections as well as by civil war. Should the Border 
States be governed by passion rather than by reason, which seems most probable, 
they will join their fortunes to the Cotton States, and form a great Slave Confede¬ 
racy of fourteen or fifteen States. A confederacy, whose bond of Union will be 


o 

O 


human slavery, whose ambition will be to widen the empire of slavery, by adding to 
itself the West India Islands and the States of Central America, and thus hope, by 
conquest or by purchase, to spread southward over the Continent. 

Whether such a vast and probably warlike confederacy could maintain peaceful 
relations with a free Republic on its northern line, whose prosperity depends on the 
undisturbed and peaceful development of its resources, is a problem which history 
only can solve. It is at best problematical, whether the same lust for empire which 
will create fillibustering expeditions into the Island of Cuba and the States of Mexico, 
in violation of every principle of justice and humanity, would leave undisturbed, a 
nation of peaceful artizans, and husbandmen, and merchants, upon her Northern 
Frontier. 

If the border States unite with the Cotton States, then an attempt will be made to 
seize this capitol, and also the archives, munitions, forts and navy of the nation. 
Mr. Wigfall of Texas, but lately declared in the Senate, that such would be the case, 
and Governor Wise of Virginia, you remember, has more than once threatened he 
would march an army of Virginians and take possession of this city, its public build¬ 
ings, and the archives of the nation. Preposterous as such a threat under 
ardinary circumstances, it is certain in my mind, that nothing but the most ener¬ 
getic preparation on the part of the Government, with the prompt and efficient aid 
of the Northern States, can prevent such a result. 

In this condition of affairs it seems to human reason impossible to avoid all the 
lorrors of a bloody and protracted civil war; even the peaceable surrender of this 
jity would not satisfy the spirit of ambition and covetousness which actuates the 
nen who guide the councils of the South. But, is it within the range of possibilities 
hat this Union can be dissolved, its public property and archives forcibly seized by 
onspirators without a bloody and desperate struggle? The free States in the main, 
re deeply interested in the collection of the revenues of the Government by means 
if a Revenue Tariff, affording incidental protection to those business interests that 
I or the time being require the fostering care of the Government. At all events, the 
stablishment of free trade, and a resort to direct taxation could only be the result of 
ong years of gradual change in the policy of the nation; a sudden and hasty substi- 
• ution of one system for the other would derange and might prostrate at once all the 
;reat interests of the country. But should the new slave confederacy of the South 
ipen her ports to the commerce of the world, then self-protection would require a 
! imilar policy at the North. Self-preservation is the great law of nature. States 
re not exempt from its sway. With the vast maritime capacities of the North, it 
would be easy to close up the mouth of the Mississippi, and the few Southern ports of 
he Gulf and the Atlantic coasts. The same causes which lead the South to seize 
he public property within their States, would make them attempt to control the 
ivers that flow through them, and thus make tributary to them the inland States, 
whose commerce must be floated on those streams. Self-preservation will compel 
he great empire of Free States that fringe the borders of the Mississippi and its 
ributaries, to force a free passage to the Ocean. And thus, protection to industry, 
ind protection to Western commerce will band in indissoluble union, the Free States 
from the Atlantic coast to the summits of the Rocky Mountains; make them in sup* 
lort of their different interests protect themselves by the force of the Navy and the 
Army, against the rival interests which are sought to be established on the ruins ot 
their prosperity. 

Again, there is a consciousness of power in the North, which will be apt to pre- 
/ent their surrender of this city and its time-hallowed memories to a republic, whose 
basis is chattel slavery. In all the elements of military strength, the North s ore 




4 


than two to one of the South. Their habits of life, resulting from free institutions 
and a colder climate, have made them, not only more familiar with arms, but more 
capable of endurance. They, too, can abandon their fire-sides, assured that no ele¬ 
ments of danger are left behind them. The wealth of the North is also much 
greater than the South. In the South, capital is principally invested in human be¬ 
ings. At the North, it is invested in the inanimate or brute instruments of produc¬ 
tion. Its products at the North are mainly the necessaries of life, and its wealth is 
in its surpluses. At the South, cotton and tobacco, rice and sugar, are almost the 
exclusive products of the soil, and the result exclusively of slave labor. Its means 
of subsistence is in the value of its productions as an article of commerce; and, 
without an open sea, masters and their laborers must starve. When the South 
musters its armies it must garrison every house at home against the terrors of a ser¬ 
vile insurrection, which, all history establishes, far exceeds in horrors, even the hor* 
rors of civil war. 

Lastly, there is the consciousness of a righteous cause, which will prevent the 
North from failing to assert their constitutional rights. In 1776, we went to war 
with a mighty power, depending, not only on our free arms, but the protection 
which the God of battles would give to a struggle for the establishment of the in¬ 
alienable rights of man. Now, the South secedes and wages war against the North, 
because the North will not prove recreant to all the teachings of the fathers, all the 
precepts of religion, and all the impulses which spring from the universal brother¬ 
hood of man ; because the North will not enter into a solemn compact to extend the 
area of slavery, and perpetuate the rule of despotism. 

What those whom I strive to represent should do in this crisis, is not for me to 
dictate or advise; all that I feel warranted in doing now, is to endeavor to impress 
the fact on your minds, that the crisis is upon us now; that the time for action has 
arrived. It is for the people to say, and to do, what they believe is right and proper. 
My prayer is, that they may be worthy to receive the Divine guidance and protec¬ 
tion, and may be worthy instruments to work out for ourselves, and our posterity, 
and for humanity, the Divine purposes. 

I now propose to give a hasty sketch of the origin and progress of those events 
which have culminated in the present crisis, believing that it may serve, in some 
measure, to determine wherein our duty consists. 

On Friday, the 19th day of February, 1847, John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, 
introduced into the Senate of the United States, prefaced by an elaborate speech, the 
following resolutions: 

u Resolved, That the Territories of the United States belong to the several States 
composing this Union, and are held by them as their joint and common property. 

“ Resolved, That Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of 
this Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, 
or by its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which 
any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any Territory of the United 
States acquired or to be acquired. 

“ Resolved, That the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects 
deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating with their prop¬ 
erty into any of the Territories of the United States, will make sucli discrimination, 
and would, therefore, be a violation of the Constitution , and the rights of the States, from 
which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that pwfechequality which belongs 
to them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union 
Uself. 

“ Resolved, That it is a fundamental principle in our political creed, that a people, 
in forming a constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the gov¬ 
ernment which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty and happiness; 
and that, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Con¬ 
stitution on a State in order to he admitted into this Union, except that its consti- 


/ 


tution shall be republican; and that the imposition of any- other by Congress would 
not only be a violation of the Constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle 
on which our political system rests.” 

The substance of these resolutions was, that Congress has no power to prohibit slavery 
in a Ten'itory. The ostensible complaint was, that the emigrant from the slave State 
was not allowed to carry his slave with him. Th ereal cause of complaint was, that 
he was not allowed to carry the slave law of his State along with him, to protect him 
in the ownership of his slave. Mr. Benton says, “in this light, which is the true one 
the claim is absurd; presented as applying to a piece of property, it is specious, has 
deluded whole communities, has led to rage and resentment, and hatred of the Union.” 

Mr. Calhoun preceded the presentation of these resolutions with a speech, in which 
( he referred to the failure of the attempt to run the compromise line of 36 deg. 30 min. 
to the Pacific—to the equally balanced condition of the States, Slave and Free—to 
the number of the Free States that would soon be admitted to the Union; destroy¬ 
ing thereby the equilibrium between the two sections, and to the claim made to pro¬ 
hibit slavery from the Territortes through the Wilmot proviso ; and said: 

“But sir, if this aggressive policy be followed, and we are to be entirely excluded 
from the Territories, which we already possess, or may possess; if this is to be the 
fixed policy of the Government, I ask what will be ourfcsituation hereafter? * * 

It is a scheme to monopolize the powers of this Government, and to obtain sole pos¬ 
session of its Territories. ******* 

Sir, the day that the balance between the two sections is destroyed* is a day 
i that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war and wide- 
j spread disaster. The balance of this system is in the Slave-holding States * * * 

i If we are to be reduced to a handful , if we are to become a mere ball to play the presi- 
I dential game with, to count something in the Baltimore caucus; if this is to be the 
result, woe, woe, I say to this Union. * * * Well, sir, what if the deci- 

i sion of this body shall deny to us this high constitutional right—not the less clear 
because deduced from the whole body of the instrument, and the nature of the sub¬ 
ject to which it relates * * * It is a question for our constituents * 

* * * I give no advice, it would be hazardous and dangerous for me to do 

so. But I may speak as an individual member of that section of the Union. * * 

I say for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth, than give up one inch of 
our equality. * * * * The surrender of life, is nothing to sinking 

down into acknowledged inferiority. * * * The condition of Ireland is 

prosperous and happy—the condition of Hindoostan is prosperous and happy — the 
condition of Jamaica, is prosperous and happy, to what the Southern States will 
be, if they should not now stand up manfully in defence of their rights.” 

Mr. Benton, after the reading, objected to postponing the regular business, for the 
consideration of these resolutions, which he called abstractions. Mr. Calhoun said, 
that he had expected the support of Mr. Benton, as the representative of a Slave-hold¬ 
ing State. Mr. Benton replied, “the Senator from South Carolina, says he calcu¬ 
lated on my support. He is mistaken. He knows very well from my whole course in 
public life, that I never would leave public business to take up firebrands to set 
the world on fire. * * * I shall be found in the right place. I arm 

on the side of my country and the Union.'' 1 

j Mr. Benton says in his “ Thirty Years View:” “ This answer, given on that day, 
and on that spot, is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish 
I posterity to remember.” He further says, that these resolutions were not acted 
on by the Senate, “ but were sent out to all the Slave States, adopted by some of them, and 
then commenced the great slavery agitation, founded upon the dogma of * no power 








6 


in Congress to ley estate upon slavery in the Territories , ’ which has led to the abrogatioi 
of the Missouri Compromise line— which has filled the Union with distrac¬ 
tion, and which is threatening to bring all Federal legislation, to a 3iere sectionai 


struggle, in which one half of the States is to be arrayed against the other, anc 


that the resolves were introduced for the purpose of carrying a question to the Slav- i 
States, on which they could be formed into a unit against the Free States.” 

Mr. Benton further says, of these resolves, that they were new , “ the first of the kim 
in the (almost) sixty years of existence ot the Federal Government — contrary to it j 
practice during that time—contrary to Mr. Calhoun’s slavery resolution of 1838— j 
contrary to his early and long continued support of the Missouri Compromise — ant 


contrary to the re-enactment of that line, by the authors of the Texas annexatioi 


law,” and which line 


carried into effect by Mr. Calhoun in the dispatcl 


of the messenger to Texas in the expiring moments of his power.” Whilst he wa: 
Secretary of State to Mr. Tyler, the words of the re-enactment were “ and in such 
State or States as shall be formed out of said Territory north of the said Missouri Cemp'ro- 
mise line , slavery or Involuntary servitude (except for crime ) shall be pro 


hibited.” “ So that,” Mr. Benton adds, “ up to the third day of March, 1845, no 


quite two years before the date of these resolutions, Mr. Calhoun, by authenti 


acts, and the two Houses of Congress, by recorded votes, and President Tyler by hi 
approving signature , acknowledged the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in a 
Territory.” 

A few days after the introduction of these resolutions by Mr. Calhoun. | 
(February 24th, 1847,) Mr. Benton, after enumerating the wrongs of which Mr. Cal-j' 
houn had been guilty, said, “ and more wrong now than ever, in that string of reso¬ 
lutions which he has laid upon the table, and in which, as Sylla saw in the young 
Caesar many Mariuses, so do I see in THEM MANY NULLIFICATIONS.” 

Some months after the submission of his resolutions to the Senate, Mr. Calhoun 
wrote a letter to a member of the Alabama Legislature in reply to one asking his 
opinion, “as to the steps which should be taken ” to guard the rights of the South, j 
Mr. Benton says, that this letter furnishes the key to unlock Mr. Calhoun’s whole 
system of policy in relation to the slavery agitation. In that letter Mr. Calhoun j 
says, “instead of shunning , we ought to court the issue with the North on the slavery ' 
question. I would even go one step further and add that it is our duty— due te 
ourselves, to the Union, and our political institutions, to FORCE THE ISSUE on 
the NORTH. * * Had the South, or even my own State, backed me, ’ 

would have FORCED the issue on the North in 1835. * * If the South 

act as it ought, the Wilmot Proviso, instead of proving to be the means of success 


fully assailing us and our peculiar institution, may be made the means of successfully 
asserting our equality and rights, by enabling us TO FORCE the issue on the 
North.” Mr. Calhoun then denounces the Personal Liberty laws of Pennsylvania, I 
and other States, and says that he holds “the toleration in the non-slavhold- 
ing states, of the establishment of societies and presses , and the delivery of lectures, 
with the express intention of calling in question our right to our slaves, and of ! 
seducing and abducting them from the service of their masters , and- finally over' 
throwing the institution itself, is not only a violation of inter-national laws, but also 
of the Federal compact.” Mr. Calhoun then proceeds to say that the issue must be j 
met first of all, by a resort to “retaliation” He says, “there is but one remedy short of 
disitnionand that is to retaliate upon our part, by refusing to fulfil the stipulations in 1 
their favor. Among these, the right of their ships and commerce to enter and de-! 
part from our ports is the rwst effectual, and can be enforced. * * That it would 

be effectual in compelling them to fulfil those in our favor can hardly be doubted, 








7 


when the immense profit they make by trade and navigation out of us is regarded; 
and also the advantages we would derive from the direct trade it would establish 
between the rest of the world and our forts,” The letter proceeds to say, 

“ My impression is, that it should be restricted to sea-going vessels, which would 
leave open the trade of the valley of the Mississippi to New Orleans by 
river, and to the other southern cities by railroad; and tend thereby to 
DETACH the North Western from the North Eastern States.” He then 
states, that the only difficulty in the way, is to secure the “ co-operation of all the 
Slaveholding States lying on the ATLANTIC GULF.” For this end he advises the 
holding of Southern conventions, so as to compel submission on the part of the non¬ 
slaveholding States to the demands of the South, or force them “to take measures tu 
coerce us, which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving the Union.” 
He says, in the end, “their unbounded avarice would control them,” and so the 
safety and triumph of the South be certain. 

Mr. Benton says, that this letter furnishes the “key which unlocks his (Calhoun’s) 
whole system of slavery agitation, which he commenced in 1835. That system was, 
to force issues upon the North, under the pretext of self-defence , and to sectionalize the 

South PREPARATORY TO DISUNION.” * 

In this same letter, Mr. Calhoun says, “Had the South, or even my own State, 
backed me, I would have forced the issue on the North in 1835, when the spirit of 
abolitionism first developed itself to any considerable extent.” 

When the Oregon territorial bill passed in 1848, with the clause prohibiting slav¬ 
ery—the same as in the_ordinanee of 1787, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and 
the Texas prohibition of 1845,—Mr. Calhoun said, “ The great strife between the 
North and the South is ended, the North is determined to exclude the property of the 
slaveholder, and of course the slaveholder HitasELF/m//£ its Territories. The sepa¬ 
ration of the North and the South is completed.” 

John A. Dix, of New York, during the debate on this bill, established by the most 
conclusive evidence, that Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr. Monroe’s Cabinet, sus¬ 
tained the Constitutionality of the clause in the Missouri Compromise excluding slav¬ 
ery from the national territories. Mr. Calhoun, at the same time, voted for an amend¬ 
ment to the Oregon bill extending the Compromise line to the Pacific. He admitted, 
in his speech of the 19th of February, 1847, prefacing the introduction of his resolu- 
! tions, that he was willing to stand by that compromise, saying,it has kept peace 

I for some time, and in the present circumstances perhaps it would be better to be con¬ 
tinued as it is.” President Polk, on signing the bill, sent a special message, showing 
the necessity of adhering to the principle's of the ordinance of 1787—to the compro¬ 
mise of 1820—the Texas compromise of 1845, and said, “ Ought we now to disturb 
the Missouri and Texas compromises ? Ought we at this late day, in attempting to 
annul what has been so long established and acquiesced in, to excite sectional divi¬ 
sions and jealousies ; to alienate the people of different portions of the Union from 
each other; and to endanger the existence of the Union itself?” 

Mr. Benton says, “ to the momentous appeals, with which this extract concludes } 
a terrible answer has just been given. To the question : Will you annul these com¬ 
promises, and excite jealousies and divisions, sectional alienations, and endanger the 
existence of this Union? The dreadful answer has been given— We Will! And in 
recording that answer, history performs a sacred duty in pointing to its authors as the 
authors of the state of things which noio alams and afflicts the country , and 
threatens the calamity which President Polk foresaw and deprecated.” 

When New Mexico and California were acquired, they were already free, by the 
existing law. The denial of the power of Congress to legislate for the exclusion of 



8 


slavery, carried along with it a denial of power to establish it by a law of Congress. 
The friends of freedom, although anxious to apply the ordinance of 1787 to the newly 
acquired territories, in the shape of the Wilmot Proviso, felt assured, by the doctrine 
advocated by Clay and Webster, that slavery was the creature of the local positive law 
of a State, and could have no existence beyond the limits of the State whose laws 
recognized or created the relation. Prior to our Revolution in 1772, Lord Mansfield de¬ 
livered the opinion of the Court in the Sommersett case, in which he said, “ The 
state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any 
reasons moral or political but only by positive law , which preserves its force long after 
the reasons, occasions, and time itself, from which it was created is erased from me¬ 
mory.” This decision, together with the common law of England as it existed 
prior to the Declaration of Independence, had become the common law of all, or 
nearly all, the States. By virtue of this principle, “that slavery can be introduced 
only by the positive law” and the positive law of New Mexico and California having 
abolished slavery—it became necessary, in order to carry slavery into those territories^ 
to invent the figment, before then never advanced, that property in slaves was recog¬ 
nized, not only by the local law of the Slave States, but by the Constitution of the 
United States. And that, upon the acquisition of territory, “the sovereignty and au¬ 
thority of Mexico in the territory acquired by the treaty, become extinct, and that of 
the United States is substituted in its place, carrying with it the constitution, with 
its overriding control over all the laws and institutions of Mexico inconsistent with it. 1 '> 
In reference to this doctrine, advanced by Mr. Calhoun, to meet the exigencies of 
slavery, seeking to overrun New Mexico and California, Mr. Benton says, in his 
“Thirty Years View:” 

“ History cannot class higher than as a vagary of a diseased imagination this 
imputed self-acting and self-extension of the Constitution. The Constitution does 
nothing of itself—not even in the States for which it was made.” * 

“ Slavery, as a local institution , can only be established bg a local legislative authority.” 

In 1849 an amendment to the General Appropriation Bill was offered in the United 
States Senate, to extend the Constitution of the United States over the Territories 
acquired from Mexico. This was in furtherance ol the new dogma advanced by Mr. 
Calhoun. Of this proposition, Mr. Webster said, “ The Constitution is extended over 
the United States and nothing else. It cannot be extended over anything except over 
the old States , and the -Hew States that shall come in hereafter, when they do come in.” 
And speaking of the supposition, that the trial by jury, and other provisions in the 
Constitution intended to secure personal rights—are extended over the Territories, 
he said, “ Undoubtedly these rights must be conferred by law before they can be en¬ 
joyed in a Territory.” 

Mr. Calhoun then said, that “the Constitution pronounces itself to be the supreme 
law of the land. * * The Territories of the United States are a part of the land. 

It (the Constitution) is the supreme law not within the limits of the States of the 
Union merely, but wherever our flag waves.” In answer to a statement made, that 
the United States Courts had decided that the Constitution did not extend to the 
Territories without an act of Congress, Mr. Calhoun said, “ if they have made such 
a decision as that, I, for one, say that it ought not and never can be respected.” 
Mr. Webster replied, that the Constitution was made for States, not Territories, that 
no part extended to them without an act of Congress—that the Territories were gov¬ 
erned by Congress, independent of and often contrary to the Constitution, as denying 
them Representatives in Congress, a vote for President, &c. And that Congress did 
in Territories what it could not do in States, as making roads, bridges, &c. The 
debate on this proposition took a regular slavery turn. Bv a elose vote the proposition. 




9 


t(to extend the Constitution over the Territories) was agreed to in the Senate, went 
to the House, was disagreed to by it, and after the expiration of tiie time for which 
the Congress was elected, the Senate receded, and the appropriation bill passed 
without this proposition. In relation to this proceeding, Mr. Benton says: “ This 
attempt, pushed to the verge of breaking up the Government in pursuit of a newly 
'invented slavery dogma, was founded in errors too gross for misapprehension. In 
the first place, as fully shown by Mr. Webster, the Constitution was not made for 
Territories, but for States. In the second place, it cannot operate anywhere, not 
even in the States for which it was made, without acts of Congress to enforce it. 
This is true of the Constitution in every particular. Every part of it is inoperative 
until put into action by a statute of Congress.” * * * * “The proposed 

extension of the Constitution to Territories, with a view to its transportation along with 
it, was then futile and nugatory, until an act of/Congress should be passed to vitalize 
slavery under it, so that, if the extension had been declared by law, it would have 
answered no purpose, exeept, to widen the field of the slavery agitation—to establish 
a new point of contention —to give a new phase to the embittered contest —and to alienate 
more and more from each other the two halves of the Union.” * 

“ The proposal was rejected in both Houses, and immediately the crowning dogma 
is invented, that the Constitution GOES OF ITSELF to the Territories with¬ 
out an act of Congress, and executes itself, so far as slavery is concerned , not only 
without legislative aid, but in defiance of Congress and the people of the ter¬ 
ritory.” * * * * “ This is the last slavery creed of the Calhoun school, 

and the one on which his disciples now stand. They apply the doctrine to existing 
Territories.” * * * * “ It is impossible to consider such conduct as any¬ 

thing else than as one of the devices c for forcing the issue with the north 5 ” 

Thus was this monstrous dogma born, which since, through the doctrines of some 
of the judges of the United States Courts, and by the endorsement of subsequent ad¬ 
ministrations, has at last brought the country to the very verge of the gulf of dis¬ 
union. 

Mr. Benton says: “ The last days of Mr. Polk’s administraiion were witness to an 
ominous movement.” This was nightly meetings of members from the Slave States, 
which were held with the greatest secrecy. Sixty or seventy members met at first 
but the greater portion ceased to attend the subsequent meetings. Through the ac¬ 
tion of committees, of which Mr. Calhoun was the leader, an address drawn by him 
was adopted as a kind of second declaration of independence of the South, in which 
the alleged grievances of the South were enumerated, as commencing soon after the 
acknowledgment of our independence and as finally arraying the “great body of the 
North against the South.” Of this enumeration of grievances, Mr. Benton said: 
11 Strange to see, they have become more remarkable for what they omitted than 
contained”—the Wilmot proviso, the Missouri compromise, were neither of them 
mentioned; the latter, he says, “was then a good thing, of which the Slave States 
wished more, and claimed its extension to the Pacific.” The past or present en¬ 
croachments were not sufficient—“something more stirring was wanted, and for 
that purpose, time and imagination—the future and invention—were to be placed 
in requisition. The abolition of slavery in the States —the emancipation of slaves all 
over the South—the conflict between the white and the black races—the prostration 
of the white race, as in San Domingo—the whites the slaves of the blacks.” * 

He says, “some passages from this conglomeration of invented horrors will show the 
furious zeal of the author and the large calculation which he made upon the gullibil¬ 
ity of the South when a slavery alarm was to be propagated.” Extracts from the ad¬ 
dress are then given by Mr. Benton, sustaining fully all that he says, and Mr. Ben- 




ton proceeds to say, “ Now tiiis certain emancipation of slaves in the States was a 
pure and simple invention of Mr. Calhoun, not only without evidence but against 
evidence—contradicted by every species of human action, negative and positive, be¬ 
fore and since. Far from attacking slavery in the States, the Free States have co¬ 
operated to extend the area of slavery within such States,” by “extinctions of Indian 
titles. * * * So far from making war upon Slave States, several such 

States have been added to the Union, as Texas and Florida, by the co-operation of 
Free States. Far from passing any law to emancipate slaves in the States, no Con¬ 
gress has ever existed that has seen a man that would make such a motion in the 
House; or, if made, would not be as unanimously rejected by one side as the other. 

* * * Yet this incendiary cry of abolishing slavery in the States has become 

the staple of all subsequent agitators .” The South are then, by this manifesto, urged 
to become united amongst themselves as the only means of preventing these imagi¬ 
nary results, and are told, if unsuccessful in doing so, they will then have to stand 
in defence of their rights, involving their all—their property, their “prosperity, equal¬ 
ity, liberty, and safety.” The original draft of this manifesto, we are told by Mr. 
Benton, went further and told what the South was to do—“but something further 
was intimated, and that soon came in the shape of a southern convention to dissolve 
the Union, and a call from the legislatures of two of the most heated States (South 
Carolina and Mississippi) for the assembling of a 1 Southern Congress ’ to put the 
machinery of the ‘United States South’ in motion.” 

This new declaration of independence, adopted at the close of Mr. Polk’s admin¬ 
istration, just before the inauguration of President' Taylor, and which was to form 
the pattern for future manifestoes, was signed by Messrs. Atchison, of Missouri; Hun¬ 
ter and Mason, of Virginia; Calhoun and Butler, of South Carolina; Downs, of Loui¬ 
siana; Foote and Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Fitzpatrick, of Alabama; Borland 
and Sebastian, of Arkansas; Westcottand Yulee, of Florida ; Atkinson, Bayley, Bed- 
inger, Bocock, Beale, W. G. Brown, Meade, R. A. Thompson, of Virginia; Dan¬ 
iel, Venable, of North Carolina; Burt, Holmes, Rhett, Simpson, Woodward, of 
South Carolina; Wallace, Iverson, Lumpkin,of Georgia; Bowden, Gayle, Hain^, 
of Alabama; Feathersten, J. Thompson, of Mississippi; La Sere, Morse, of Loui¬ 
siana.; R. W. Johnson, of Arkansas; Stanton, of Kentucky. In all forty mem¬ 
bers of that Congress. 

President Tayler having reference to tiiese disunion movements at the close of Mr. 
Polk’s administration, speaking of the duty and interest of every American, in cheer- 
ishing union sentiments, said of the Union: “ In my judgement, its dissolution would 
he the greatest of calamities. Upon its preservation must depend our own happiness, 
and that of countless generations to come. Whatever dangers may threaten it, I 
shall stand by it and maintain it in its integrity, to the full extent of the obligations 
imposed^ and the power, conferred upon me by the Constitution.” The first and last 
paragraphs of Mr. Taylor’s Message alluded to the danger of disunion, and Mr. Ben¬ 
ton says, these paragraphs were added to the message by the President after it was 
written, in consequence of a visit by Mr. Calhoun, in which he expressed a desire 
that nothing should be said in the message on this subject. Referring to these par¬ 
agraphs, Mr. Calhoun, in his last speech in Congress, which was read for him by 
Mr. Mason of Virginia, said: 

“It (the union) cannot then be saved by eulogists on it, however splendid or numer¬ 
ous. The cry of‘Union,Union, the Glorious Union!” can no more prevent disunion 
than the cry of ‘ Health, Health, Glorious Health ! ’ on the part of the physician can 
save a patient from dying.” 

In the session of 1849-’50, Clay, Webster and Calhoun, met for the last time in 



11 


the Senate ot the United States. Early in the session Mr. Clay introduced his com¬ 
promise resolutions, which were referred to a select committee of 13, and formed the 
basis of the celebrated compromise measures of that Congress. One of those reso¬ 
lutions declared, that as slavery did not exist by law in the territories acquired of New 
Mexico, and was not likely to be introduced there, that territorial governments should 
be formed for them, without the adoption of any restriction or condition on the sub¬ 
ject of slavery. Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, could not see any compromise in this pro¬ 
position, and declared that he never would consent to take for the South anything 
less than the extension through those territories of the line of 36 deg. 30 min. to the 
Pacific. In reply to him, Mr. Clay said : 

“ I am extremely sorry to hear the Senator from Mississippi say that he requires, 
first, the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and also that he 
is not satisfied with that, but requires a positive provision for the admission of slavery 
south of that line. And now, Sir, coming from a Slave State, as I do, I owe it to 
myself—to truth—to the subject, to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote 
for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had not before existed , either 
South or North of that line. Coming as I do from a Slave Slate, it is my solemn , 
deliberate , and well matured determination, that no power , no earthly power, shall 
compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery either South or North of 
that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British ancestors for the intro¬ 
duction of this institution upon the Continent of America, I am, for one, unwilling 
that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and of New Mexico shall re¬ 
proach us for doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us.” 

Mr. Benton says, “ These were manly sentiments, courageously expressed and tak¬ 
ing the right ground.” The proposed line through v New Mexico and California was 
politically different from that of the Missouri Compromise. “ One went through a 
territory all slave, and made one half free; the other would go through territory all 
free and make one half slave.” 

On the fourth of March, Mr. Calhoun made his last speech in the Senate. He 
enumerated his various subjects "of complaint, beginning with the Jeffersonian ordi¬ 
nance of 1787, and showed how one by one the religious, social and political cords 
that bind the Union, had been snapped or weakened. Of these, Mr. Benton says, that 
the anti-slavery ordinance of 1787—was adopted before the Constitution—had its 
origin and support indhe South; the Missouri Compromise line had the same origin , 
and was supported by the South, by Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Monroe’s Cabinet; that the 
long continued agitation of the slavery question, of which Mr. Calhoun complained, 
was originated by him in 1835, and since kept up by him ; that the rapid increase of 
the free States complained of, was owing mainly to the nature of things, to climate 
and soil, and in some degree to slavery itself which he was so desirous to extend. 
That Mr. Calhoun’s remedy was, to maintain/* the equilibrium, by acquiring South¬ 
ern territory and opening it to slavery,” and by maintaining the equality of the States, 
which was to be done K by admitting slavery to be carried into all the territories— 
even Oregon—equivocally predicated on the right of all persons to carry their 1 pro¬ 
perty ’ with them to those territories. The phrase was an equivocation, and has been 
a remarkable instance of delusion from a phrase. Every citizen can carry his pro¬ 
perty now wherever he goes, only he cannot carry the State law with him which makes it 
property , and for want of which it ceases to be so when he gets to his new residence. 
The New Englander can carry his bank along with him, and all the money it con¬ 
tains, to one of the new territories, but he cannot carry the law of incorporation with 
him ; and it ceases to be the property he had in New England. All this complaint 
about inequality in a slaveholder in not being allowed to carry his ‘ property ’ with him 
to a territory is nothing but a camplaint that he cannot carry the law with him, and 
in that time is no inequality between the States. They are all equal in the total inability 


12 


of their citizens to carry the State laws with them.” Mr. Calhoun in order to preserve 
the Union, proposed “ to provide for the insertion of a provision in the Constitution, 
by an amendment, which will restore to the South, in substance, the power she pos¬ 
sessed of protecting herself, before the equilibrium between the sections was destroy¬ 
ed.” This, although not stated in his speech, Mr. Benton says, was to be the election 
of two presidents, one from the free and one from the slave States, and each to ap¬ 
prove all acts before they became laws. “ Upon this condition alone, the speech de¬ 
clared the Union could be saved! which was equivalent to pronouncing its dissolu¬ 
tion. For, in the first place, no such amendment to the Constitution could be made; 
in the second place, no such double-headed government could work even through one 
session of Congress, any more than two animals could work together in the plow, 
with their heads yoked in opposite directions.” 

The Committee of 13, with Mr. Clay at its head, reported in favor of Mr. Clay’s 
plan of embracing in one bill, the admission of California as a State — Utah, New 
Mexico, and Texas bills— the bill for abolishing the slave trade in the District of 
Columbia, and the fugitive from service bill. These five bills, which had before 
that time, been introduced separately before Congress, were tacked together and pro¬ 
posed as a specific for the ills the country was suffering. In a speech, unexampled 
for its humor and sarcasam, Mr. Benton attacked this report. The measures con¬ 
nected in M. Clay’s bill, were disconnected and each of them received separate con¬ 
sideration,and were separately passed — the whole of them constituted the so called 
Compromise of 1850. The bill for the admission of California as a State, was made 
the “test” question in the slave agitation—and it was so presented by Mr. Calhoun, in 
his last speech before .noticed. He declared that “California will become the test ques¬ 
tion. If you admit her, under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, youcompel 
us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole of the acquired Territories, 
with the intention of destroying irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sec¬ 
tions.” Mr. Calhoun died before the bill for the admission of California was taken 
up — an attempt was made and failed to make the State a slave State north of 36° 
30'. After its passage, a protest, signed by Messrs. Hunter and Mason of Virginia, 
Butler and Barnwell from South Carolina, Turney of Tennessee, Soule of Louisi¬ 
ana, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Atchison of Missouri, and Morton and Yulee of 
Florida, was presented to the Senate, and demanded to be entered on the journals. 
In that protest they say, as the first cause of their dissent, that this bill “gives the 
sanction of law, and thus imparts validity to the unauthorized action of a portion 
of the inhabitants of California, by which an odious discrimination is made against 
the property of the fifteen slave holding States of the Uuion, who are thus deprived of that 
position of equality which the Constitution so manifestly designs, and which consti¬ 
tutes the only sure and stable foundation on which this Union can repose.” They also 
protested, that the bill deprived the slave States of their right to “a common and 
equal enjoyment of the Territories of the Union”—and they conclude, by saying, 
that “ the slave-holding States have never sought more than equality (in the 
Union) and in which they will not be content to remain with less.” * * The 

entry of the protest was successfully opposed by Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Benton, the 
latter said, “all of these sectional movements are based upon the hypothesis, that, if a 
certain state of things is continued, there is to be a dissolution of the Union * * 
The Wilmot proviso, to be sure, is now dropped, or is not referred to in the protest. 
That cause of dissolution is dead ; but the California bill comes in its place, and the 
system of measures of which it is said to be a part. * * * I cannot help 

considering it (the protest) as a part of a system — as a link in the chain of mea¬ 
sures all looking to one result * * * that of a dissolution of the Union” 


13 


The rendition of fugitives from service, Mr. Benton said, in the debate on the law 
of 1850: “Is the only pdint, in my opinion, at which any of the non-slaveholding 
States, as States, have given just cause of complaint to the slaveholding States.” The 
act of 1793, had become inefficient, from the fact, that its provisions were authorized 
to be performed by State officers, who refused to act under the law. The United 
States Courts had held, that it was optional in State officers to refuse to act under 
the law. Mr. Cass, Mr. Benton, and others, were in favor of simply amending the 
law of 1793, so as to devolve the duties upon officers of the United States. Of the act of 
1850, Mr. Benton says : “ It has been worth but little to the slave States in recovering 
their property, and has been annoying to the Free States, fron the manner of its execu¬ 
tion, and is considered a new act.” 

Immediately after the passage of these, so called Compromise measures of 1850, in 
the same year, a Southern Convention was held at Nashville, the home of Jackson 
and then his grave. It recommended the assembling of a “ Southern Cenvention.” 
North Carolina and Mississippi alone followed the advice. The South Carolina 
Convention elected her quota of Representatives to the proposed Congress ; Missis¬ 
sippi provisionally, by submitting her law to the approval of the people; South Car¬ 
olina asserted the aggressions (without stateing what aggressions) on the Slave¬ 
holding States to be the cause of her action. Of these, Mr. Benton says: “in fact 
there were none to be stated. For even the repeal of the slave sojournment laws in some of 
them,” and the refusal to allow the State officers or State prisons, to be used for the 
arrest or detention of fugitives from service, “though acts of unfriendly import* 
and a breach of the comity due to sister States, and inconsistent with the spirit of 
the Constitution, were still acts which the States, as sovereign within their limits, upon 
the subjects to which they refer, had a right to pass. Besides, Congress had readily 
passed the fugitive-slave recovery bill, just as these Southern members wished it; 
and left them without complaint against the National Legislature on that score. All 
other matters of complaint which had successively appeared against the free States 
were gone—Wilmot proviso and all.” 

The act of Mississippi gave, as reasons for its action— 

“First. That the legislation of Congress, at the last session, was controlled by a 
dominant majority, regardless of the constitutional rights of the slaveholding States; 
and 

“Secondly. That the legislation of Congress, such as it was, affords alarming evi¬ 
dence of a settled purpose on the part of said majority, to destroy the institution of 
slavery, not only in the State of Mississippi, but in her sister States, and to sub¬ 
vert the sovereign power of that and other slaveholding States.” 

Mr. Benton waived the question, whether these reasons, if true, would justify the 
abrupt attempt to break up the Union, and proceeded to examine their truth: 
he says, that the majority of the last session, in “ every instance , was helped out by 
votes from Slave ^States, and generally by a majority of them.” He says, of the asser¬ 
tion of the purpose to destroy the institution of slavery: “There was no such settled 
purpose in the majority of Congress, nor in a minority of Congress, nor in any half 
dozen members of Congress — if in any one at all. It was a most deplorable, asser¬ 
tion, of a most alarming design, calculated to mislead and inflame the ignorant, 
and to make them fly to disunion, as the refuge against such an appalling catas¬ 
trophe. But it was not a new declaration. It was part and parcel of the original 
agitation of slavery commenced in 1835, and continued ever since. To destroy sla¬ 
very in the States has been the design attributed to the Northern States from that 
day to this, and is iiecessary to be kept up in order to keep alive the slavery agitation 
in the Slave States. It has received its constant and authoritative contradiction in 


14 


the conduct of those States at home, and in the acts of their Representatives in Con¬ 
gress, year in and year out.” Mr. Benton then, as an evidence that there is no such 
danger to slavery in the Slave States, as alleged, refers to the increased value of 
slaves, which, he says, has attained a height incredible to have been predicted twenty 
years ago; and this, notwithstanding the fact that “property is timidand that of 
all property, the peculiar property of the South, is “ timid;’ 5 and if made insecure, 
either in title or possession, would most rapidly and surely sink in price. 

“But,” Mr. Benton says, “although the slavery alarm does not act on property? 
yet it acts on the feelings and passions of the people, and eycites sectional animos¬ 
ity, HATREDI FOR THE UNION, and DESIRE FOR SEPARATION.” 

Disunion, separation, were the great objects which Mr. Calhoun had in view dur¬ 
ing his life, and it is that which now actuates the hand.full of followers who now 
follow his pernicious counsels, who, without his wisdom or his prudence, 11 rush in 
where their master feared to tread ” Disunion, separation, which was to be brought 
about by inflaming the South against the North, and so producing unity of action 
at the South. As results of this separation, “Southern cities were to recover their 
colonial superiority in a State of sectioned independence ; the ships of all nations were 
to crowd their ports to carry off their rich staples, and bring back ample returns. 
Great Britain was to be the ally of the new “United States, South.” All the Slave 
States were expected to join, but the new confederacy was to begin with the South 
Atlantic States, or EVEN A PART OF THEM • and MILITARY PREPA¬ 
RATION WAS TO BE MADE to MAINTAIN BY FORCE what a South¬ 
ern Convention should decree.” 

Such are the expectations now, such were the expectations eleven years ago, sys¬ 
tematically advocated by a disunion press, established in Washington by the contri¬ 
butions of the signers to the Southern manifesto, issued iu 1849. Such were the ex¬ 
pectations which moved Mr. Calhoun, when he presented his nullificatipn resolu¬ 
tions in 1833. Those resolutions which first presented as a proposition, that a State 
had a Constitutional right to secede; which assumed that this Union of States, this 
government of powers, delegated directly by the people of the whole country, of 
powers exercised by the people’s servants, operating upon individuals, and on States 
through individuals, “was a mere compact among sovereign parties, (that is States) 
without any common judge,” which “each has a right to judge for itself, as well of 
the infraction, as of the mode and measure of redress.” 

I have thus presented as briefly as a clear presentation of the subject would per¬ 
mit, Mr. Benton’s view of the origin and authorship, the plans and operations, of 
the great scheme of disunion and secession. It is a Southern view, taken a 
Southern man representing a slaveholding State, himself a slaveholder. A view 
presented at the close of his long and memorable career, committed to his country¬ 
men as he stood upon the verge of the grave, under all the responsibilities which his 
position, fame, and patriotism imposed upon him. This scheme of disunion , whose 
author was John C. Calhoun, ran through nearly twenty years, during which Mr. 
Benton was an actor and a witness. It forms no inconsiderable part of the great 
political drama of which he was a leading “star.” Its history was written from 
an imperious sense of duty; it was completed after the dearest ties which bound 
him to earth, except that of love to the Union and the State which had so long 
cherished and sustained him, had been severed. The two large volumes into which lie 
condensed the stirring scenes of his momentous life, will pass down to coming ages 
an enduring monument of his faithful services, his fearless and stainless integrity, 
and of his undying love to the free institutions of his country, and above all, of his 


15 


unselfish devotion to the cause of Historic Truth. Should his labors not be 
crowned with the reward which alone he hoped for, and which was to be showered 
upon his grave, not upon his living head? Should this Union of which he was so 
faithful a guardian, so valiant a defender, be shattered into fragments? The future 
historian of the Republic of the United States, will point to Thomas H. Benton, 
as the noblest of that proud galaxy of statesmen that shed its luster over the last days 
of that glorious but ephemeral Republic, and quote, as the moral and the sum of 
his great work, his own memorable words, with which he closed his work. 


“Confederate Republics are short lived—the shortest in the whole family of Gov¬ 
ernments. Two diseases beset them, corrupt election of the chief magistrate when 
elective; sectional contention , when interest or ambition are at issue. Our con¬ 
federacy is now laboring under both diseases, and the body of the people , now as, always, 
honest in sentiment and patriotic in design, remain unconscious of the danger, and even 
become instruments in the hands of their destroyers. If what is written in these chap¬ 
ters shall contribute to open their eyes to these dangers, and rouse them to the resump¬ 
tion of their electoral privileges', and the suppression of sectional conten¬ 
tion, then this view will not have been written in vain. If not, the writer will still have 
one consolation—the knowledge of the fact that he has labored in his day and gener¬ 
ation, to preserve and perpetuate the blessings of that Union and self government, 
which wise and good men gave us.” 


I have purposely forborne to connect this history with the events which have 
occurred within the last few years, or to any extent to point out its bearing upon 
the events of to-day, or to suggest those remedies for the existing evils which suggest 
themselves to my mind, that if done, must be at some future day. It is now the hour 
of passion, not of reason. The ear is deaf to the living voice! but perhaps the 
voices of the dead, the pure, the good, and therefore, the truly great, may yet arrest 
the attention of the living, hush the tempest of passion, and once more, as of old, still 


the raging of the seas. 

Believing that this Government, like all the rest of His created universe, is under 

the particular and especial care of our Heavenly Father, I have no fear for its future 

destiny, except what God’s justice and infinite mercy and wisdom inflicts upon our 

nation for our individual sins—sins, which I will not judge, lest I should be judged ; 

lest in endeavoring to remove the mote from my brother’s eye, I should neglect to 

remove the beam from my own. In the most perfect reliance that Infinite Wisdom 

and goodness will over-rule even evil for good, 1 have the utmost confidence, tha t 

whether united or divided, whether as a great and glorious Republic, or, as jarring 

and dissevered fragments, our country will yet be saved for a happy destiny. For 

that era of peace and prosperity, when men, no longer acting from selfish principles 

shall find that individual and public weal depend, and can alone be found, by each 

member of society, making as his central motive of action the good of his fellow 

man, and not his own. w _ 

ALFRED WELLS. 


Washington, January 8, 1861. 


H Po’kinhorn, Printer, Washington. 






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